Innholdsfortegnelse for 7/4/2022 i The Big Issue

It’s interesting getting on a train that is packed with dressed-up young people. Drinking and joking, screaming and arguing. A vast, uncoordinated party – and we other passengers have to fit in around the mass of celebratory teenagers and young people. It reminds me of a scene from a movie, of pieces of history that have been made into film, celebrating the end of war, or drunken weddings. Parliament and its leadership seem to be going through a meltdown, much of it because of other riotous parties where at times – we have been told sensationally – that people were sick in waste paper bins. Well that was the bit of sensationalism I remembered most graphically. Now I was sitting in a train with hundreds of party people crammed in.…

We’re now 12 years into austerity. Since David Cameron took power in the wake of the 2008 global economic crisis, spending on UK public services has fallen. Poverty has increased. Gains in life expectancy have stalled. Household debt has reached mountainous proportions – UK citizens owed a total of £1,781.7 billion in May 2022. Inequality is up, as is inflation. Galleries, museums, youth clubs, libraries and pubs have closed. It has been nothing short of class war – waged by the wealthy on the poor – says performer, activist and writer Darren McGarvey. “It was saying: look, we’re going to cut your public services that we set up because we know you’re poorer, and you depend on them. We’re going to cut health budgets, which we know is part of…

REVIEWS A clear-eyed stroll along the narrowing road Oh to live with as much curiosity as Geoff Dyer does. Across 11 non-fiction books and four novels, essays, criticism and memoir, Dyer has looked intently at the world around him, picked and poked at it, measured his own responses, and then written about them. The result is an oeuvre like few others: the world according to Geoff. I sometimes find a little of Dyer, of his twitching, magpie mind and peculiar leaps and connections, goes a long way. At his best, though, he is a delight, beating fresh pathways through life’s dense jungle, forever stopping to chatter about the flora and fauna, dragging in literature, music and sport to prove whatever his point is. It’s the journey that counts. The Last…

ANALYSIS Doctor Who’s alternative past and future Are current Doctor Who fans aware of how lucky they are? The show is gearing up for its 60th birthday next year under the returning stewardship of Russell T Davies, the perfect diamond geezer for such a significant anniversary. It seems like there is an exciting new announcement almost every day, from the confirmation of the charismatic Ncuti Gatwa as the 14th Doctor to the unexpected return of beloved Who alumni like David Tennant, Catherine Tate and more. It is all a far cry from the 1990s when the BBC’s quaintly DIY sci-fi franchise was in the doldrums. If you did not have ready access to VHS or DVDs – let alone BBC iPlayer – you took your Who fix wherever you could…

BOOKS ROUND-UP Sax, drugs and rock’n’roll On hot and sticky nights when I’m struggling to sleep I’ll often find myself seeking out familiar company – there are several books which are never far from my nightstand, unless I’ve loaned them benevolently to a friend who’s told me they’re curious to learn more about jazz, or by force to one who insists that they hate it. Val Wilmer’s As Serious As Your Life, first published in 1977 and reprinted many times since, is a book I return to often for reference and usually discover something new each time, both in Wilmer’s prose and her stark photography. It chronicles the rise and development of ‘new jazz’ throughout its most dynamic period, 1960 to the mid-’70s, profiling significant figures like John Coltrane, Ornette…

ARTEMIZA TUDOR, 50 I came here from Romania with my family a few years ago. Because I spoke limited English, The Big Issue was something that I was able to do quickly to generate some income for me and my family. It was hard at the beginning, but in time I’ve started to enjoy selling the magazine. People were friendly to me and soon they got to know me, and now I’ve become a part of the community. I’ve managed to improve my English by speaking to customers on my pitch while I was selling magazines, and now I am enjoying this job very much. It’s been great on my pitch recently. People love me, and most of my customers from before the pandemic are back buying the magazine from…

Get in touch The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue Blame game I’m astonished after reading the letter from Sylvia, Kent [June 13] regarding standing charges. Is she for real? According to Sylvia it’s Martin Lewis’ fault that energy supply companies have gone bust because he told people to move to a cheaper supplier!! So Sylvia, should we have all stayed on the high tariffs and continued to allow ourselves to be ripped off ? In the words of John McEnroe, you cannot be serious! Michael Payne End the stigma I saw that HRH Prince William wrote about why he sold the Big Issue [June 20]. Having been homeless myself, I know that stigma around being homeless, or poor media portrayals…

Darren McGarvey is a writer, activist, columnist, and former rapper-in-residence (aka Loki) at Police Scotland’s Violence Reduction Unit. He was part of the Poverty Truth Commission that was hosted in Glasgow in 2009 and has presented eight programmes for BBC Scotland exploring the root causes of antisocial behaviour and social deprivation. His first book, Poverty Safari, won the Orwell Prize and was a Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller. Having grown up in poverty in Glasgow’s Pollok, he brings personal experience to the inequality debate.…

As a teenager, I was passionate about sports. Tennis was the obvious one, but I love what you call football and we call soccer. I played high-school soccer for four years, I played basketball so my world, my friendships, was through sport. I was shy growing up. A lot of people wouldn’t think that, from the person I became or how I acted on the tennis court, but I was pretty shy. I couldn’t understand like why kids would be so mean to each other, it didn’t make sense to me. Being good at sport was an important way for me to be able to exist in school. I felt like people didn’t realise how good a person I was. I thought people didn’t understand me – I’m a good…

1 White Teeth by Zadie Smith An epic story told through the eyes of complex and compelling characters, mostly first and second-generation immigrants from the Commonwealth. It has cross-cultural friendship at its heart and will make you laugh out loud. 2 Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie This masterful reimagining of Sophocles’ Antigone tells the tragic story of three British Muslim siblings. Narrated through multiple points of view, it’s a fierce, unforgettable read about the collision of love, family and politics. 3 Disobedience by Naomi Alderman Set in modern-day Hendon, this tells the story of a disobedient daughter from a strict Jewish Orthodox family who is returning home. Be prepared to salivate as food and its preparation is deliciously executed. 4 Queenie by Candice Carty- Williams Queenie, a young British-Jamaican woman…

INTERVIEW We all wonder. If you won the Lottery, how would you spend the cash? “I’d probably give the money to poor people,” says Rainn Wilson. He knows he’s on a Zoom call with The Big Issue. He may just be trying to look good. “I would, I really would,” he insists. “But then again, I’ve got enough. I made money on a little TV show so I’ll be fine.” That little TV show, the US version of The Office, remains one of the most popular comedy series this century, almost a decade after it finished. As such, Wilson will always be known as Dwight, though he’s grown facial hair and ditched the severe middle parting. “We get OK residuals,” he continues. “Residuals for streaming services are very, very minimal.…

On a recent trip back to my parents’ house my mother presented me with a load of papers. They were in a box that hadn’t been opened in 30 or so years. It wasn’t really a sentimental presentation. It was part of a clearout, and if I didn’t take it the binmen would. It was a collection of things I’d amassed through my teenage years and as I was leaving school. There were yearbooks, a newspaper that some friends and I had made (we were VERY angry at Brian Mawhinney, then minister in the Northern Ireland Office) and a lot of poetry. It is quite something to read your angsty teenage poetry, raging at a lot of things and obviously having read too much Seamus Heaney. For the most part…

BIG ISSUE GROUP The UK is facing a huge skills gap – and The Big Issue plans to do something about it There are 1.3 million job vacancies waiting to be filled in the UK. So why are more than one million people still unemployed? New research from Big Issue Group has found that 79 per cent of people believe there is a skills gap in the UK, a mismatch between the jobs available and the skills of the population. It comes amid a cost-of-living crisis, with more than one-in-five people in the UK living in poverty – that’s 14.5 million people. The survey of nearly 2,000 people, carried out by YouGov for Big Issue Group in early June, found that most people believed skills training is the best way…

The Renters Reform Bill is part of Michael Gove’s ‘New Deal for Renters’ and is set to make its way through Parliament in the coming year. The long-awaited legislation, revealed last month, aims to redress the power balance between tenants and landlords. The most significant change – albeit more than three years after former PM Theresa May announced it – is the ban on ‘no fault’ evictions which allow landlords to turf out tenants without giving a reason. Landlords will also be blocked from refusing to rent to families or people receiving benefits and must consider a request from renters to keep their pets at home. The plans have been largely welcomed by campaigners who have warned they “must keep their teeth” as they move through Parliament. But, while the…

It’s festival time, and after being on an enforced Zoom call for nearly three years, everyone is, understandably, going a bit nuts. This summer, thousands of people will don a pair of neon shades and a bucket hat, get hammered on £10 beer and joyously contract Covid from the armpit of a guy in an H&M Hawaiian shirt. And why not? It’s what we’ve all been waiting for! Also some bands will be on, but WHATEVER. I recently attended a music festival in Barcelona, and it’s good to know they’re pretty much the same as they ever were, except instead of finding a bottle of wee next to the stage, you’ll find it next to an empty hand sanitiser station (which is also, coincidentally, covered in wee). The crowds are…